Summary of the impact

City plans and local urban design schemes, especially in rapidly developing countries like China, typically rest on limited evidence-based analysis. Governments are increasingly demanding better justification of such plans. This research has developed a tool that blends spatial analysis with economics into a unique methodology to appraise baseline plans and evaluate the impact of alternative urban configurations. It rests on the premise that complex information about the way people interact is mediated through a city's street network. Retrieving that information as indices and relating those indices to urban performance measures allows urban plans to be evaluated for specific outcomes.